


The Ones That Will Be

by Catchclaw



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Bearded Steve Rogers, Bottom Bucky Barnes, Bucky Barnes's Metal Arm, Bucky has a dog, Dealing With Trauma, Dirty Talk, Dreams, Hand Jobs, Identity Issues, Leaving, Loss, M/M, Masturbation, Memories, Nightmares, Penetration, Post-Black Panther (2018), Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Reunion Sex, Rimming, Sanctuary, Shuri's protective of Bucky, Top Steve Rogers, Wakanda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-26
Updated: 2018-03-26
Packaged: 2019-04-07 23:00:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14091582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catchclaw/pseuds/Catchclaw
Summary: After he's awakened in Wakanda, Bucky's dreams of the past are more vivid, more certain, than it seems his future will ever be.





	The Ones That Will Be

In Wakanda, after you’re awakened, your dreams each night are vivid and bright, more real than the world that surrounds you; your dream-self sharper, more certain, than you fear that you, this new you, will ever learn how to be.

Sometimes, you dream of Brooklyn. 

The sidewalks first. Long stretches of concrete that unroll before you, a path that goes on and on, uptown and downtown, north south, east and west. The heat of it in the summer, the way it rose up through your shoes and pooled in your knees, made your whole body feel like heavy dead weight.

The fire escapes, then. Unsteady ladders that stretch to bedroom windows, to living rooms. Hanging steps in the sky that sway in the wind and rattle when you perch on them, on the one outside your bedroom window. Steve’s.

He hates it when you smoke inside, and you can see his point. Asthma and all that. No reason to make it even harder for him to catch what little breath his body chooses to afford him.

So you sit on the sill instead and kick your legs out on the fire escape. Rest your shoes there in the morning when you should be on the way to work. Your bare feet in the evenings, when the air’s finally starting to cool and Steve is banging pots in the kitchen, making the best meal he can from the little that’s in the larder. He isn’t cooking tonight, though. He’s been at the library all day, keeping company with greatness. Stocking up that brain of his for all of life that’s yet to come.

He'll be home soon. You’re waiting.

You draw the smoke in deep; imagine you can feel it filling every inch of your lungs before you blow it out, send it drifting down to the street where it mingles with the music from the juke joint on the corner, the sounds of a big start Saturday night. It has no pull on you on this evening, doesn’t stir your feet restless; all you want in the whole goddamn great world is, from the sound of it, about to walk through your front door.

You pinch out your cig and go straight for it. 

Steve stumbles in with armful of books and a pencil in his teeth and you grab him, make him drop everything; sling an arm around his waist and kiss him good and hard until he stands with giants at his feet, Faulkner and Forester and Homer, laughing as he tries to kiss you back.

“What?” he says as you lug him into the bedroom, toss him like a flour sack on your nice neat sheets. “What’s all this for?” 

You yank off your t-shirt and open your dungarees and watch his mouth go slack. “I missed you,” you say. “Isn’t that reason enough?”

His gaze follows your clothes to the floor; zip back up quick to find your eyes, to blink at you heavy, ready. “Yes. Definitely yes.”

He comes with his face against your neck, his lips moving frantic, the same speed as his hips as they chase after your fist. You tell him how good he is, how pretty, how dear, and then roll on top of him, straddle his slim hips and bring yourself off over his chest, the flushed crest of his throat, the tip of his chin.

He falls asleep in a heap and you hold him and watch the sun turn over the floor, hear the music swell outside to meet it, get so lost inside your own head that you don’t notice when he wakes up. Until he pokes you in the chest, says: “Hey. What’s eating you?”

“Hmmm?” You reach for him, slide an arm around his shoulder and pull him close, until your heads nearly knock on the pillow. “Nothing, really." 

“Really? ‘Cause you look like you’re trying to solve the world’s problems by your lonesome. I’m sure Mr. Roosevelt would appreciate the effort, but I think he’s got it pretty well covered.”

“Nah, nothing like that. Just thinking.”

He sees right through you. Always could. He sits up and peers down at you, chases the hair from your eyes and eases his fingers around the edge of your mouth. “Ok. Do you wanna talk about it? Whatever it is that’s not bothering you?”

You catch his wrist and lay your lips at the center of his palm. “I ran into McGreevey today. You remember him? From PS 89?”

“The red-headed guy who went out with Jenny Morgan? Yeah. Didn’t they get married?”

“Yeah. Two kids and counting. He got his orders yesterday. He’s reporting to basic in two weeks; they ship him out in six.”

Steve whistles. “That fast?”

“He’s got some college, he said, so he’s gonna be an officer. Some poor saps are going be saluting to that guy soon, you believe that?”

“Wow. Skeevy McGreevy with a couple of stripes. Huh."

You reach up and pull him to you, chest to chest. Breath in the smell of his hair, sweat and sex and that sweet shampoo you like to buy him, the kind that makes him smell like a peach. “Yeah, well. He, uh, he told me Jenny and the kids are moving out to Weehawken when he starts basic. They’re gonna stay with his mom until, you know. Until he comes back.”

“Sure. That makes sense.” 

You slip your nails down his back, trace your uncertainty between his shoulder blades. “It got me thinking, is all.”

“About what?” Steve says.

He’s gonna make you say it, isn’t he? Shit.

“About…about what you’re gonna do when I’m not here, baby. Once they ship me out, I mean.”

“What, you don’t think I can take care of myself?” He says it playful, sort of, but you can hear the steel behind it. Yet another reason you love him.

“’Course I do. It’s more the logistics of the thing. Money and all that. I’m not sure you can afford this luxurious penthouse shithole without me, is all.”

He chews on that for a while, so long that you can hear the streetlights coming on outside, the choke of the first taxis out on their evening strolls. Then he says: “You’re probably right. But the thing is, Buck, I’m not planning to need it for too long after you leave.”

Then it’s your turn to think, to finally say, as gently as you fucking can: “They’re not gonna take you, Stevie. I know how badly you want it, and it’s a beautiful thing, but they don’t care about anything as important as heart. They don’t care if you want to go; they just wanna know they can use you. That you’ve got the kind of body that’ll fit into their nice rigid lines.”

Steve, he sighs, a kind of long hollow breath. “That’s not why you signed up, though.”

“How do you know that? Maybe it was for the three squares a day and the chance to get yelled at on the regular." 

“Come on.”

“Oh,” you say, “oh, and the marching. Can’t forget the marching. You know how much I love a parade.”

He snorts, gives you a shove. “Uh huh. Give it up, Buck. That crap won’t fly with me.”

You shove him back, a little harder than you should. “It ain’t crap. It’s the god’s honest truth.”

He comes back at you, a head full of steam, and plows you flat on your back, hovers above you on those popsicle arms, face burning with something sweeter than fury. “You forget that I know you,” he says. “Always have, always will. I know your head better than you do somedays. And miracle of miracles—I love you anyway.”

You catch his cheek in your palm and stroke a thumb over his mouth, pink and swollen perfect from your kisses. “You’d better keep it that way, kiddo.”

He smiles, leans down for another kiss, a hundred. “Couldn’t talk me out of it if you wanted to. Believe me. So you’d better not even try.” 

That’s a good dream. The sweetest. You wish it would come every night.

 

*****

 

Sometimes, though, you dream of lavender. Of warm water between your toes and wine in your belly and the sound of well-fed laughter in the next room.

This is France.

You’d been filthy for two weeks. Two weeks of mud and tree sap and rain, the kind that soaked into your boots and your hair and never really dried, never gave you any sort of peace, but now, you’re warm and dry and best of all, every stinking inch of you is clean, scrubbed down with hot water and homemade soap and it feels like the whole damn world is possible again.

The Nazis are on the run and for one night in this long, long war, you are not. 

You crawl from the tub the farmer’s wife set up for you in her kitchen, shake free of the last of the steaming water, and creep up the backstairs, your hips wrapped in a haphazard towel. Below you, in the living room, the sewing room, and the hall, the Commandos are happy; some singing, some snorting, all blitzed out on brandy and the first solid meal you all have had in months. They’re grateful to the Allies, these people, grateful to see a flag with stripes, to be able to sleep without fear of gunfire presaging the dawn. So grateful that the farmer and his wife are bunked down in the barn; they’d insisted you all take the house: _pas de question_. Nobody’d really protested. Even Steve had lit up at the prospect of sleeping under a roof, much less in the big, comfy bed you’d drawn lots for, carefully broken matchsticks from Happy’s hip pocket. And the best part was, when you’d won, the whole bunch of them had turned to grin leering at Steve, who’d obligingly turned three shades of pink.

It’s the best day you’ve had in ages.

You push open the bedroom door and slip in before the thing can creak too loudly. “I am a changed man,” you say, practically whistling as you nudge the thing closed. “I tell you, Steve, I’m a—" 

“You’re a what?”

The only light in the room’s from the fire, and it takes your eyes a minute to adjust after the bright candle bloom of the kitchen; takes you a moment to see that Steve’s in the middle of that big, comfy-looking bed, stripped down and hard and staring like he’s determined to eat you alive.

“Christ, Stevie.”

He laughs, that low, heated one he only breaks out in bed. “Nah. Pretty sure there’s only one of those.”

You want to answer but your eyes are too busy chasing the lines of his body. In the firelight, you can see every dip, every curve, the bony kid from Brooklyn burned away and in his place, this Greek statue come to glorious, Technicolor life. 

It’s not like you haven’t seen him without his skivvies since he found you, since he saved you, since he dragged you out of Zola’s hell and back to the world of the living, but you’ve never seen him this way, when looking doesn’t seem like a half-stolen luxury but instead a god given imperative.

“Do I have to order you over here?” Steve asks. There’s a blush on his cheeks again, one that’s spreading obligingly down his throat and his chest. “The night’s not getting any younger, Buck. And neither am I.”

“Shut up,” you say. “Lemme look at you.”

“Tell you what,” he says. “Why don’t I give you something to look at?” He lets one great hand drift to his cock, cup it. “That way tonight’s not a total loss.”

“Oh, pardon me,” you say, miming apologetic. “Am I wasting your time, Captain?”

“Mmmm. Maybe.” He gives himself one good stroke, then another. “I mean, don’t get me wrong. I can entertain myself plenty good by my lonesome.”

“Yeah?” you say. “Show me.”

The look he gives you is a challenge, all heat, and he jerks himself again, harder this time. The way he actually likes it. “Is that what it’s gonna take to get you over here?”

You make a big show of thinking about it. “It’s a good place to start.”

He holds onto your eyes and gets his fist into a rhythm, a nice steady pace that knocks his head back, gets him gasping. The longer you look, hovering there at the foot of the bed, the hotter his face runs, the tighter your towel.

“Oh fuck,” he says, cutting the words through gritted teeth. “Fuck, Bucky, come on.” 

You lean against the footboard and grin at him, pretend every instinct in your body isn’t screaming at you to touch. “Nah. You look like you’re doing just fine.” 

His free hand’s on the move now, drifting over his stomach, tumbling down to stroke the soft inside of his thigh. “I’m gonna come if you keep looking at me like that.”

“Hmmm,” you say without meaning to. “And here I was counting on you coming inside me. Too bad.”

His eyes blow open, blue, and his hand stutters to a stop. Stills. “You what?”

It’s one of those things you’ve never said, never really admitted to yourself, either. Because to say it, to even think it would be a conscious acknowledgement that things had changed; that the world, even the one you carried between you, is more complicated now and what you want is different. That you aren’t the same person you had been in Brooklyn, the one before Zola, and so what you need from Steve, the only person who knew you then and who knows you now-that’s different, too. 

It isn’t just that his body’s changed, that he’s bigger than you; he could always shield you from the world and all the evil in it even when you both were just kids. But now, you need him stretched over you, owning you, murmuring your name like a mantra and driving the darkness out of you with his mouth, his cock, his heart. You need it, but you haven’t known how to ask. Maybe tonight, here, you finally do.

“You hard of hearing now?” You shake your head, ignore the heat in your own cheeks. “All that money, all that science they pumped into you, and they forgot about your ears?”

He clutches the base of his dick and bites his lip, blinks. “I heard you. I just-”

“You just what?”

“I’ve never done that.”

Now it’s your turn to stare. “You’ve never put your cock in somebody?”

“No.”

“The whole time I was gone, you never fucked some pretty girl’s cunt?”

“God, Buck, no, I-”

“Or gave it to some good-looking boy?” The thought’s a match, tinderbox fury. “I bet they were lining up for you, sweetheart, when you stepped out looking like this. You telling me you never once licked one open and shoved your way in?”

“No. Never.” Soft, his voice is.  Almost reverent. “The only person I ever wanted was you.” It must show on your face, how good that feels, how much it stings, because he sits up and reaches for you, his fingers just brushing your hand. “Is that so hard for you to believe?”

“Kind of,” you say around tears you can’t quite swallow, that you refuse to let fall. “Yeah.” 

He cups your jaw, half your face disappearing into his big paw. “Well then,” he says. “Let me prove it to you.”

You shatter with your face buried in the pillow, biting at goosefeathers as he tastes you, his hands holding you open as your thighs shake, as your fist moves, as you lose yourself all over the farmer’s clean linen sheets. The noise he makes shakes your whole spine, the tip of his tongue easing up your cleft, down, chasing his fingers, the smell of your spunk. 

“Turn over,” he says. “Please, god, Buck, turn over. Right now.”

You sit the little jar of Vaseline on your chest and watch his face while he opens you, watch the way his eyes try to be everywhere at once: on your face, on the slide of come on your belly, on his fingers as they work their way in.

“I’m hurting you,” he says when you flinch, when your hips lift away from the broad spread of his touch.

You reach down and catch his wrist. Hold him there. Shove him in. “Just a little,” you say. “But it’s good. I want it.”

He makes a low, warm sound, and eases his way out again, in. “You do? You want this, Buck?”

“Fuck,” you grunt. “Yes. Please.”

He kisses the inside of your knee, murmurs: “You want me inside you? Fucking you? Touching every part of you?”

Your idiot cock jerks, already hungry again, hopeful. “Stevie, come on,” you groan. “It’s not nice to tease.”

That earns you a good, solid slam and when you can think again, he’s bent over you, his lips wet on your cheek. “Not teasing,” he says, breathless. “Horny as all hell. When I get my dick in you, Bucky, I’m gonna fucking come.”

You laugh. “You’re gonna lose it just like that?” You wind your arms around his neck and arch your back, press yourself against his hand. “One shove and you cream me? That’s it? That’s all I get?”

You can feel him shaking with laughter, desperation. “Maybe a shove and a half.”

You snort, bury the noise against his throat. “Maybe I should send you back, huh? Ask for a model with more stamina.”

He twists his fingers, rams them in blunt and perfect. So fucking good. “It’s not my fault. You’re so tight, you’re going to squeeze it right out of me. Won’t have a choice.”

The weight of him bumps your thigh, brushes, and all at once that’s all you want, all you could ever want. “Fuck me,” you say in his ear, the words drop kicked out of you. “Shut your goddamn mouth and put your cock in me, Stevie. Fuck. _Fuck_.”

He finds yours with his and kisses you savage, all teeth and fervent growl, and then you’re empty, full of lack, and his hands are curved under your hips and he’s right there at the edge of you, at the edge of everything.

“If you ever leave me again,” he says in a voice like church bells breaking, “Buck, I swear to god, I don’t know what I’ll do.” 

You turn your fingers in his hair, pet at the sweet bough of his back. “Shhh. I’m not going anywhere, baby. You’re not getting rid of me that easy.”

He rests his forehead against yours and pushes in slowly, slowly, slow. It still hurts. It’s still heartbreakingly good.

“You don’t know how much I missed you,” he whispers. “How sure I was that I’d never see you again.”

“‘Course I do,” you say. “What do you think I thought about when I was stuck in that hellhole? You, baby. Every damn moment of every damned day. Stared down that same sorrow.”

He groans, a living thing you can feel in your own gut because he’s flush with you, his cock at last all the way in, and when you look up, his eyes are fixed on you, stars whose light breaks away any dark.

You stroke his ear, the soft skin that lies beneath it. “I’m right here. You’ve got me.”

His hips hitch hard, kick the breath from you, whispers: “I know. I know. Don’t let go, honey. Please don’t.”

You dig your nails into his shoulders, hang on. “Never. Never.”

He gets in a half-dozen good thrusts before he loses it, before his whole body starts to stammer and he says your name again and again and comes all at once, like a building with its legs kicked out from under. You kiss him, lick at his sighs as he rushes into you, a wet, gorgeous heat that’s relentless, like his body’s been waiting a lifetime for this moment, for this bed, for you.

He falls asleep with your head on his chest, his arms locked tightly around you, his mouth tucked into your hair. Outside, there’s no sound in the night, only the barest whisper of wind. The room smells of lavender and spunk and the fire’s dwindled way down in the grate. You press your palm to the warm waves of his skin and you say thank you, thank you to whatever gods there are that watch over stubborn soldiers, over boys from Brooklyn, over those fools lucky enough to find the love of their life.

Sometimes, you dream of that night, of not sleeping, of clutching him tight and begging the daylight not to come, asking those same gods to let the night stretch to forever, war and killing be damned.

They never do. No, in the dream, the sun always rises and Steve always stirs, smiles. Crawls from the bed and picks up his shield and for you, the Commandos, for Steve, the night is over and the war begins again.

 

*****

Sometimes the true nightmares come.

The empty, screaming dreams of oblivion, where it’s your eyes that see and your body that acts but neither are yours to command. You are and you are not, all in the same breath, in those dreams. 

Blood and death and fear surround you, shield you from every last scrap of light. You have to fight so hard to exist, in oblivion, to separate yourself from the darkness that’s like tar, that holds you down hard, that seeps into your body, down to the very back of your head. You don’t know your name. You don’t know your own body. And yet you’re still you somewhere, a mirror hung with a cloth that longs for the sun; you are still you, smothered, and it would be so much easier, all of it, if you were dead.

You dream of beating a man senseless. A man with a звезда on his chest. Another blow and another that make your arm sing, even after he surrenders and give up the fight. Still, you hit him again. You dream of an instant when you knew him, shining and golden and clear, and then he falls away, one more broken piece plummeting towards a river below.

You dream of pulling him from the water, this man. A man with a звезда on his chest. One that’s been cracked by your fist. You dream of watching him breathe, of spreading your hand over the звезда and counting the paces his heart takes beneath it.

And you leave him there, in this nightmare. Turn from him. Run. The shroud starts to sink from the mirror, to show you yourself again, and you leave him there anyway. You know his name. You know yours. For the first time in decades, you know who he is to you and you leave him there anyway.

 _Steve_.

You whisper the word when you wake, when you finally fight your way out of it, as you lie still and wait for your panic to lessen, for the rabbit-fast fear in your head to lessen enough that you can sit up and get out and stare up at the stars blinking high above the grasslands, the lake, your little hut tucked beside it. 

“Steve,” you say again, breaking the night with the sound of his name. _Steve_.

*****

  
You tell them about the dreams, your friends in Wakanda, but only a little. 

To Shuri, they’re an interesting problem, an after effect of the deep clean she and her people gave your poor goddamn brain. The suds, she says, must’ve dipped so deep into your subconscious that they kicked out the dust, jolted these memories back to life. 

T’Challa says you should be grateful that so much of what’s come back to you is good, things you’d want to remember. You don’t have the heart to tell him that none of the bad stuff was ever lost to begin with. Every bad act, every murder, every second of cruelty that HYDRA ever had you do in their name—they were all there each time they yanked you from the ice and back to life, playing on a perpetual loop behind your eyes. There’s nothing terrible to remember because the bastards never let you forget.

But you can control them now, thanks to Shuri. The movie projector from hell is still there, but it’s under your control, as much as any memories can ever be. Those horrors, at least, have the sense to stay out of your dreams. 

Eight months you’ve been awake now. Eight months into your new life and you’re still trying to put yourself back together. To figure out who it is you want to be. 

Take your arm, for example. Or the absence of it.

It’s been Shuri’s pet project for months and the kid is lit up about it, bouncing around her labs like a kid with the best Christmas gift. You don’t have the heart to tell her that you’re reluctant, that you aren’t sure, that you can’t wrap your head around having another piece of metal dug into your body no matter how adroit it is or how beautiful it looks. Something about the whole idea makes your flesh crawl.

But she has her head dead-set on it and it’s hard to argue with her anyway, much less about something as seemingly logical as having two arms. So you let her poke and prod you every day, week after week. You let her run around in your neural pathways and strap prototypes to your body and watch the fireworks your brain does or doesn’t make. You don’t tell her how unsettled it makes you to feel that metal clinging to you, even in this preliminary way. You’ll get over it, won’t you? That’s what you tell yourself. Surely. It’s only a matter of time.

Until one day something slips. She pokes the wrong neuron or the metal’s too hot. Or maybe you’ve just had enough. 

“Stop,” you say.

“Hmmm?” She’s distracted, her eyes focused on the monitor. She doesn’t see your distress.

“Stop,” you say again. Louder now. Firm.

Shuri turns, her fingers in the air, data swirling around them. “Stop what?”

You snarl. You don’t mean to. “ _This_ ,” you spit. “All of it. Get this thing off me!”

“This-?”

You flail at the edge of the table you're perched on and struggle to pull away from the arm, but it’s clamped to the table and it’s clamped to you and oh god, oh god-

Shuri’s hand hits your chest firm. “Bucky,” she says. “Bucky? Be still. I’ll take it off.”

Something loud falls out of your mouth, bitter ash. A sound of the dead.

“I’ll take it off. But you have to be still for a moment, all right?”

You hear her, the words skate over your ears, but what you feel is panic, static, heat, a buzz in your throat like bees awash in furious butterflies. You claw helplessly at the thing, at the place where it bites into your body, and what comes out now is a wail, like a siren underwater, drowning you, drowned.

“ _Sergeant_!” Shuri barks. She grabs your face, her eyes bright and calm. “It’s all right. You’re ok. See? Let me just-!”

Something whirs, lifts, and the dead thing attached to you comes free, swings too high and too hard in the air, too fast for you even to breathe, but she ducks, nimble as a cat and misses its punch. Comes back up smiling, smiling.

“It’s ok,” she says. “You are fine. You’re fine. See? So am I.”

You’re not screaming anymore. But you’re trembling.

She reaches for the sensors on your forehead. Pops them free, the points at the arm. “I’ll take it off now. Are you ready?”

You nod, feel her strong hands wrap around the temporary point of connection. “A twist now and some pressure. Ok?” She waits until you nod again and then there’s a push, a soft suck, a whine, and then she pulls it away. And you’re free.

You’re still trembling.

She sets the thing aside and stands in front of you, steady and still, all of her usual exuberance dampened. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t mean to cause you distress.”

You try out a few words. “I know. It’s ok.”

“Pffft,” Shuri snorts. “Of course it’s not. We’re supposed to be making you better, not freaking you out.”

“You didn’t-” 

“Clearly, I did.” She shakes her head. “You’re too patient as a patient, Bucky. Sometimes I forget to remember that you’re an old man.” She pats your face like you’re the kid and she’s the one a century old, and stares at you so hard that you feel like a math problem. “Perhaps,” she says, “perhaps now would be a wise time to reach out to your friend. Your fellow geezer. He knew you when dinosaurs roamed the earth, didn’t he?”

She’s aiming for lightness. But you don’t laugh. “No, it’s not a wise time.”

“Are you sure?”

You think of Steve here, in this place. Picture him at your side, worrying, his face passive but his eyes-god, his eyes-a mess of concern, of love, of expectations and as much as you want to touch him, to have his hands in your hair and his mouth everywhere, you aren’t ready to face him.

“I’m not whole yet,” you say to Shuri. You don’t mean to. “I’m not done.”

“Aren’t you?” She doesn’t wait for an answer. Clucks her tongue, dips her chin at you to say _get down off that damn table_. “This thing we are making, this arm. You don’t have to take it. You understand that, don’t you?”

You hop down, use it as an excuse to look away. “Yeah. Sure I do.”

“I mean,” she says, drawing the word out, doing a little dance around its edge, “do not get me wrong: this arm, Mr. Bucky Buck, is incredible _and_ amazing _and_ frankly fly as hell.”

“Don’t sell yourself short, kid.” 

She spreads her hands. “I never do, elder. But…but just because it is cool, the coolest, doesn’t mean that you need it, hmm? Maybe this is part of the reason your head is having trouble connecting with it: because your heart, your heart, it doesn’t want to.” 

You consider that. “My mom used to say: don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”

“Well, my mother says: don’t drive into a wall when you can see a way around it.”

“Remind me never to get in a car with you.”

She makes an impatient sound. “You don’t have to drive into this wall, Bucky. That’s what I’m saying. You’ll forgive me for not realizing that I was steering you towards it.”

You lift your shoulders. “I don’t know that I knew it, either.”

“Mmmm. But now we both do, yes?” She pokes at something around her wrist, gives a quick verbal command. “You need time, something we haven’t given you enough of. You should go home for a while. Sleep. Read. Teach that dog of yours how to swim. I’ll speak to my brother and make sure you’re not disturbed. Ok?”

The relief you feel is palpable. Fuck, just the promise of fresh air, of the lake and the vast endless sky above it makes your heart unclench and the tension in your belly recede. “Ok,” you say. “Thank you. That’d be great.”

She walks you to a monoship, one of the slim crafts that ferries you to the city and back, and on the way, she does something she’s never done before: she slings an arm around your shoulder and leans in, the way you’ve seen her do with T’Challa. Says: “Think about what you want your future to be, Bucky; think about what it should look like, eh? You’ve spent enough time on your past.”

That night, you and Luce abandon the hut and sleep out under the stars. The air is warm, the sky clear in every direction. There’s no moon, and it feels like the very world itself is a cradle cupped in the hands of the universe, of some unseen, unspoken god.

And maybe your subconscious takes orders from somebody, because for the first time in a long time, you don’t dream of anything. Nothing, except a vast, unending sky.

 

*****

 

You’re hip deep in the grasslands when you hear a ship overhead, that soft, familiar whine. Beside you, Luce sits up, startled, and in the distance, you hear the terns out on the lake call to each other and shoot into the afternoon sky.

They’re not expecting anyone. And neither are you.

It’s been a week since you last went to the city: a whole week without company, without contact, without dreams. A week of hikes in the hills beyond the village, of long naps in friendly arbors, of afternoons spent hip deep in the lake watching Luce play along the edge, the pup stubbornly refusing to swim. A week of evenings spent reading, stretched out on your mat with the hut’s door tied open to let the smell of shadow flowers in, a snoring dog by your side.

It’s been good for you. You didn’t realize how much they were taking out of you, those daily trips to the city, those hours spent playing patient in Shuri’s gleaming laboratory. You used to thrive on the company of others, to crave it. You used to hate being alone. Now, you realize, you need this kind of separation, this time to turn inward. You relish the quiet.

Even the kids have stayed away, the ones who live in the closest village two klicks over. Shuri wasn’t kidding about somebody laying down the law.

They’re good kids, most of them. More curious than anything. Loud sometimes, rowdy others, but always kind when they come to ask politely if they can swim in the lake. The first time they asked, you were startled. It’s their lake, you said. Their land. You’re just visiting. But, they said, no, you’re a guest of the king and your home is right beside the lake and therefore they must have your permission.

You laughed, taken aback by their guilelessness, and said yes. You always say yes. 

One evening, after supper, they approached you gingerly, a group of eight, giggling. You were sitting by the last of the fire, on rocks still warmed by the sun, and the gaggle stopped as soon as you greeted them, held position a few feet away. 

“Hey,” you’d said. “Hi guys. What’s going on? Little late for a night swim, don’t you think?”

They tittered, swayed together like meercats, and then a girl broke away and approached you, edging into the firelight, struggling to control a wiggling bundle in her arms.

“Hi, Dabiku,” you said.

Dabiku beamed at you. “Hi, Bucky,” she said. “We brought you a present.”

The bundle yipped and finally leapt out of the girl’s grasp, tumbling in a wagging lump at your feet. A pup.

“She’s like you,” Dabiku said as you reached down and scratched the puppy’s head, the soft silk of her ears. “Hmmm? See?” She pointed. “Three legs instead of four.”

You ran your fingers gently over the stump of her front right leg, neatly sewn and nearly healed. “What happened?”

The little girl looked somber. “She was bitten by a serval cat. It killed one of her brothers and took this one’s leg. My father saved her life, but her mama isn’t patient with her anymore. She doesn’t understand why this one can’t keep up with the others. But we think”-here she looked to her compatriots and back, everybody nodding in time-”we think you would be. Patient with her, I mean. And you could teach her how it is to be.” 

The puppy turned on her back, whining happily as you rubbed her sandy belly. “Poor girl. Does she have a name?”

The children gasped. Dabiku stared at you, scandalized. “Of course not!” she said. “To give her a name is to claim her. She’s yours. That’s your job.”

You laughed, let the all the kids see you smile. “Ok, guys. I got it. I think I can handle it. But only if you promise me something.” 

They leaned close, expectant. “Depends,” Dabiku said, not giving at inch. “What is it?”

“You’ll help me teach her what it means to live here, won’t you? I’ve only been in Wakanda a little while. You’ve been here your whole lives. I don’t want to miss anything, forget to tell this pup something that’s really important. Will you all help me with that?”

There was a brief explosion of chatter, and then a consensus; a firm nod from Dabiku. “Yes,” she said. “We will do that. We’ll teach her all that we know.”

“Thank you,” you said. “And thank you for this gift. She’s beautiful. Thank you.”

Dabiku patted your head, a sweet, childish blessing, and then flew back into the fold, scattering her colleagues like brushbirds, the whole lot trampling back towards the village, calling each other’s names in the dark.

The puppy laid her chin on your arm and fixed her dark eyes on your face. You traced the white whorls that surrounded her eyes and said: “Hello, sweetheart. What would you like me to call you?”

It takes a while and a few false starts, but you settle on Luce. Italian for _light_. The children decide they approve.

“Luce!” you shout as she takes off towards the landing pad, the flat patch of grass on the far side of your hut. She ignores you completely. She never does that.

“Damn it,” you say, and chase her over the ridge and back down towards the lake, your tunic bunching helpfully around your damn knees. It slows you down just enough that by the time you catch up, she’s sitting about five feet from the flat grass, watching the ship settle onto the ground.

It’s a monoship, one of Shuri’s, but she hadn’t sent you any warning that one was coming, or checked to see if you needed any supplies. She never does that, send a ship without asking, and given that she's the one who insisted on this time alone and that she's done so much to protect it, none of this makes a damn bit of sense.

“What the hell,” you say, and then the ship’s hatch eases open.

It’s not supplies. It’s not Shuri.

It’s a man. 

A tall man with a sandy blond beard and a dark t-shirt and blue eyes you’d know anywhere, anywhere.

Goddamn it, you think. Goddamn it, Shuri.

Steve's smile is hesitant, his voice even more so. “Um. Hi.” 

“Hi.”

“I hope-I hope it’s ok that I’m here.”

“It’s fine,” you say, flat. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

“Well.” He scrubs the back of his neck and looks for all the world like the boy he used to be, the kid up in Brooklyn who read too much and made fun of your cooking and hustled newbies down at the juke joint with a pool stick for everything in their pockets and change. “You didn’t call for me, after they woke you. I guess I figured you would. So I realize that I’m kind of crashing the party.”

You have to look away. “Yeah, well,” you mutter. “I’m sorry." 

“Don’t be.” He sounds almost offended. “Jesus, Buck, don’t do that. You don’t owe me anything.”

“What? Of course I do.”

He holds up a hand, palm towards you. Peace. As much for him as for you. “You weren’t ready to see me,” he says. “That was the message I got from T’Challa.”

It’s humiliating, having your weaknesses out on parade. “No,” you say through gritted teeth. “No, I wasn’t.”

“I can understand that,” Steve says. “I mean, I do. Doesn’t mean I didn’t hate it, Buck, ok? But I do understand. It takes time."

It’s his compassion that undoes you, that unthreads every string of fear and uncertainty you’ve been clinging to since you woke up. Damn him. You can feel your mouth twist, the tears burn behind your eyes, anger giving way to uncertainty. “I’m not finished,” you manage. “Fuck, Steve. I’m still broken. I didn’t want to see you this way.”

“What way?”

“Just because HYDRA’s out of my head doesn’t mean it’s on straight, you know? I wanted to have all the pieces in line before I saw you again. That’s all I fucking wanted. I mean, I haven’t been myself with you in seventy-five years—you realize how long that is? God. And I wanted that so bad. To make sure that you knew what you were getting. To make sure what you were getting was me.”

Two steps and he’s in front of you, looking stricken. “God. God, Buck. So much has happened, so much was done to you—of course it’s gonna take time for you to sort through that. And it’s ok that you feel different because I’m willing to bet that you are. I was, when they pried me out of the deep freeze and the only mind games I had to fight with were my own.” 

“I keep dreaming about us,” you say. “How we were. Sometimes it feels more real than all this.”

“Good dreams or bad ones?”

“Some of both.”

His mouth turns up, a little sad. “Things won’t be like that again. For better or worse.”

“I know that,” you say, “but what scares me, Stevie, is that you’ll keep waiting for him to come back, the Bucky you knew way back when.”

He reaches for your wrist, turns his fingers gently around it. Not a cage. A cradle. “I know you,” he says. “Always have, always will. I know who you are, Bucky Barnes, fundamental. Way down at the core. And no matter what hells you’ve had to walk through, I know the guy I love is still there. You're the vein of my heart.”

“You think the best of me. That ain’t the same thing.” 

“I love you,” he says. “And that’s just the way that it is. Don’t try and talk me out of it, Barnes.”

You turn your hand so your palms meet. “What if it isn’t that easy?”

He hums a little, lets his nails catch your skin. “But what if it is?”

“I don’t know,” you murmur. “That’s the thing. I don’t know, Steve." 

“If you want me to leave, I will,” he says, “Just tell me. It wasn’t fair to ambush you like this. I knew it wasn’t but damn it, I did it anyway.” 

“Let me guess: you had your arm twisted by a very persistent princess named Shuri?”

“Persistent is the most diplomatic way to put it. She _insisted_.” He chuckles. “She thinks the world of you, Buck. My god. I had to promise on my firstborn that I wouldn’t upset you, that I’d leave the second you looked at me crosswise.”

“But she still insisted you come.”

“And I still said yes, yeah. I thought it was worth the risk.” He squeezes you hand. “And I’m a selfish bastard who couldn’t wait to see you. So there was that in there, too. Wasn’t all altruism.”

You chuckle. “Should I be worried that a teenager has appointed herself my protector?” 

“A kid that smart? Uh, no. I’d be thanking my lucky stars.”

Suddenly there’s a wet nose at your knee, whine. 

“Pup,” you say, impatient. “Not now.”

Steve beams, though, and bends down, clearly delighted. “And who is this? Your other bodyguard?” He lets go of your hand and offers his to the puppy instead. “Hi there, honey. Hello.” 

“This is Luce.” 

“Luce,” Steve says. “What a pretty name. Hi, girl.” He tucks his hand under her chin and she stares at him adoringly, thumps her tail in the sunshine and sighs.

“No one ever pets her,” you say. “Or feeds her. Just ask her." 

“Oh, I can see that. Nobody loves you, do they?” She licks at his face and he laughs and god, he’s beautiful. Is he. You’d forgotten how much. Your memories, however fierce, don’t do him justice. 

What’d Shuri said? _Think about what you want your future to be_. _Maybe you’ve spent enough time on the past_. On how it was. Rather than how it could be. 

“Steve,” you say. 

“Hmmm?” he says, his hands still fast in Luce’s fur.

You take a deep breath, let it fly. “Um. Hi.”

He looks up, amused. “Hi, Bucky.”

You reach down and drag him up and throw your arm around his shoulder, high and hard around the back of his neck. “Hi,” you repeat, the word muffled this time, wet. “Jesus christ. Fuck you, _hi_.”

He grabs hold of you, his grip like a beautiful vise, and his relief is palpable, alive in the pound of his heart. “What should I have gone with, huh? _Come here often_? Or _Where have you been all my life_? Or would you prefer that I sang? I got a couple a ballads I could’ve rustled up and-” 

You clutch at his hair and pull his head back, tip your eyes just enough to meet his. “Shut up, Stevie,” you say. “Just shut up.” And then you’re kissing him, furious, ardent, and he opens for you, groans, gives you every goddamn reason to stay in his arms forever, another 70 years to make up for the ones that were stolen, the ones that you had every right to, the ones that should’ve been yours.

The ones that will be, if you have anything to say about it. 

Steve claws at your back, drags his nails down the curve and pulls it out of you, a moan, a sound that makes him swell, makes you ache. “Buck,” he gets out.

You work your hand beneath the hem of his shirt, trace the heat of his skin. “What?”

“Forgive me for being forward, but we need a fucking bed.”

You grin and he does and it’s like the sun’s come out all over again. “Lucky for you, Captain,” you say, “I just happen to know where to find one." 

You lose your tunic to the dirt and Steve pulls off his shirt and by the time your back hit the soft mat, his hand’s on your cock and yours is in his pants and enhanced or not, neither of you is gonna last very long. Especially when he stands up and kicks out of his boots and gives you a look that’s almost feral; and hell, the sound you make when he’s tucked again over you, skin to skin, it most certainly is.

“Fuck, I’ve missed you,” you say. 

He shudders and knocks a hand between you, clutches both of your cocks. “You’re beautiful,” he mutters into your mouth, “so fucking beautiful, Buck. You feel so good.”

It’s greedy, that first time, greedy and dirty and loud. It’s like being kids again, so eager to touch that you both come stupid, hips and hands in the wrong place, his mouth half-crooked over yours, laughing as he smears himself into your skin.

The second time, though is better, slower. He pulls you into his lap, braces your knees against his thighs and watches your face as he opens you up, the slick oozing down his fingers as you clutch his shoulder, run your knuckles over his cheeks, his forehead, his mouth.

When you can, you ease down on him, a slow roll that makes his eyes wide, wider, wide, and you ride him just as slow, just as sweet. He tucks his head against your chest, his palms spread over your hips and pants until he stops breathing, goes beautifully still and fills you up, gives you all that he has until it’s sliding out of you, until he runs his fingers through it, pets at the place where you’re joined. 

“Come on,” he says, low, his voice perfect and broken. “Touch yourself. God, yes. Just like that. I wanna see it.”

You have to let go of him to do it but he makes it easy, balances your weight in his hands like it’s nothing; holds your thigh with one and traces the stretch of you with the other and when you come, a startled splatter on his chest, he says your name again and again, his fingers spread over your skin. And then he turns you on your back and fucks you again, fierce this time, fast, his mouth on your neck, your hand wound in his hair.

After, you drift for a while, feeling sleep trail its fingers through your head, and then shake it off, slip away. You pad outside and stand naked in the shoals, watching the sun stretch its arms towards the horizon. There is wind and the sound of the water. The hum of life in the trees and up in the hills, the sound of Luce nosing happily in the sand. 

Then Steve is behind you, his arms looped around your waist, his voice curled into your ear. “Hope you’re not tired of me already.”

You lean back a little, give him some of your weight. “No way,” you say. “Not hardly.”

He hums, this warm sullen sound that pools in the small of your back, the twitch of your cock. “Good. So come back to bed.”

You reach up and cup his elbow, still bony. Lean back and kiss his jaw, catch the edge of his smile as it slides up out of his beard.

“I love you,” he murmurs. “Did you know that?”

“Oh, baby,” you say. “That’s one thing I’ll never forget.”

**Author's Note:**

> "Time is neither linear nor broken but fully present in each moment. And while it is true, as Sebald writes, that the dead return to us, I find it more accurate to say that we are the dead, forever returning, and we return, naively and habitually, to places and people of both suffering and bliss." -- J’Lyn Chapman, “The Sentence of Absolute Time and Space,” _A Thing of Shreds and Patches_
> 
> Come [say hello](http://catchclaw.tumblr.com/) on the tumblr machine!


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